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- How Healthcare Challenges Technology
- Offering All-in-One Solutions for Hospitals
- Adding Functionality, Such as Wayfinding
Identification solutions company HID Global has been growing its presence in Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, most recently acquiring GuardRFID, a provider of real-time location system (RLTS) solutions for the healthcare industry. With the acquisition, the company says it plans to offer a more unified portfolio for its healthcare customers that can include asset-management and employee-alert protection, as well as infant and patient wander management.
The strategy behind acquiring GuardRFID was twofold, according to Mark Robinton, the VP of HID’s IoT Services Business for Identification Technology (IDT). For one thing, Robinton says, GuardRFID’s product focused on infant safety and wander management are complementary to what HID already offers. HID sells solutions related to staff duress in hospitals, as well as for tracking goods used at such facilities, such as medical equipment. The two companies, he explains, “share similar channels to address both those use cases.”
Secondly, Robinton says, between the two companies, “There is also a portfolio footprint for us [HID] to continue to expand our technology into.” Together, the two businesses are poised to offer healthcare solutions leveraging a variety of technology types, ranging from Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID), as well as Wi-Fi or active 433 MHz.
How Healthcare Challenges Technology
GuardRFID, launched 15 years ago, is based in Vancouver, Canada. The company’s infant-security solution consists of wearable tags that typically transmit data via BLE. The tags are often worn as wristbands by mothers and infants at hospitals, and GuardRFID provides software to manage location data and enable access control. Similarly, it offers patient-wandering solutions for at-risk patients, such as the elderly or those with mental health conditions, according to Kerry Brock, GuardRFID’s president and chief revenue officer. Less commonly, she says, the company also offers staff-duress and asset-tracking solutions.
Mark Robinton
HID Global offers a portfolio of solutions using wireless IoT technologies to identify, verify, track and communicate with objects. One sector the company serves is healthcare, and it has been focusing on expanding its reach in this area. “When we looked through the market,” Robinton says, “we tried to find a leader in that space that had a reputable brand and a great footprint, and we found GuardRFID.”
The GuardRFID acquisition follows HID’s 2016 purchase of BLE company BlueVision, which developed and marketed the BLE-based RTLS solution for staff tracking, asset tracking and patient flow that HID now offers worldwide. While HID has gained prominence in the healthcare market for some applications, Robinton says, “We did not address the infant or wandering use cases.”
Healthcare is a large and growing market in the IoT space, Robinton notes, with well-defined use cases that cannot always be addressed by a single provider. That means hospitals often deploy multiple solutions to address individual applications. The demand for technology-based solutions is growing, HID reports. “The post-COVID-19 tension for nurse and staff safety is something that HID’s trying to address with our existing solutions,” he states.
Hospital personnel can use active RFID products in the form of staff badges that enable them to press a duress button if they require support, and the systems can track their locations and workflow. But worldwide, Brock says, healthcare companies are straining to provide the support patients need. “The pandemic actually put incredible pressure on some already very hardworking, caring individuals,” she adds, and healthcare companies have lost personnel, not only at acute-care facilities but at care homes for the elderly.
Offering All-in-One Solutions for Hospitals
A recent American Hospital Association (AHA) report found that between 2019 and 2020, job vacancies for nursing personnel increased by up to 30 percent. Shortages are expected to persist, the research indicates, with data from a Mercer U.S. healthcare labor market study predicting a shortage of up to 3.2 million healthcare workers in the United States by 2026.
Kerry Brock
HID and GuardRFID assert that technology is poised to help hospitals and care facilities bridge that gap between patient care and staffing resources. The number of healthcare workers that the United States would need in the coming years is significant to keep up with the demand for population growth aging population, the companies explain, noting that one could extrapolate those numbers to Canada, the United Kingdom or any country.
Technology use cases in healthcare are well defined and often well adopted, Robinton says, creating a relatively high barrier to entry for new technology deployment in the healthcare RTLS space. Acute-care hospitals, he reports, have especially high standards for cybersecurity and patient record data security. “These are critical 24-7 businesses that need to be very reliable.”
Consolidation in the IoT and RFID technology markets has been taking place at the same time as the consolidation of hospitals, Robinton says, “All of that leads to standardization of technology and the demand for bigger, stronger providers.” GuardRFID has carried out approximately 300 deployments of its solutions for infant security and wandering patient management, primarily in North America. Its acquisition by HID, Brock says, gives it the financial backing to expand its offerings. “I call it the muscle,” she adds.
For instance, Brock says, patient-safety demands are extending into emergency departments or facility-wide. “Once you’ve put in the infrastructure for your staff-duress system,” she states, or for infant protection, a hospital can expand to include greater functionality, with a complete asset-tracking system, as well as solutions for patient and staff safety. “We bring the software and the front-end” data management for RTLS applications, Brock states, “and HID brings the additional hardware to our portfolio.”
Adding Functionality, Such as Wayfinding
Other solutions may include wayfinding apps, Robinton says, which would allow patients and their families to find their way quickly to an office or clinic, without requiring assistance. BLE data could be accessed by an app in a user’s smartphone to locate a variety of offices or services. The technology would let them view where their family or friends were waiting for them, or where their diagnostic screening will take place.
To address these and other use cases, Robinton says, “We’re becoming more and more universal in the types of technologies that we offer. I think our ability to pull those together and use the right technology for the right problem” makes the company more competitive—and there are more acquisitions ahead, he says. “HID Global sees more consolidation opportunities,” he states. “There’s still more technologies and use cases to add to the portfolio.”
HID Global has been busy with acquisitions of late. The company recently acquired Janam (see Janam, HID Global Share Growth Vision Following Acquisition), Technology Solutions Ltd. (see Acquisition Brings Mobile UHF Reading to HID Global), Vizinex RFID (see HID Global Expands Footprint with Vizinex RFID Purchase), InvoTech (see HID Expands Textile Solutions Offering with InvoTech Acquisition) and Omni-ID (see Acquisition of Omni-ID Expands HID’s Geographic RFID and IoT Presence). The company is an independent brand of access-control and door company Assa Abloy.
Key Takeaways:
- With GuardRFID under the HID Global umbrella, the companies plan to offer healthcare solutions that enable everything from staff duress and asset management to infant protection.
- By combining forces, HID and GuardRFID say they will target the challenges hospitals currently face around growing patient numbers, consolidations and safety concerns.